Household Cogeneration

The news that net metering may be going away at our utility a lot sooner than we hoped had me think about how we could make solar work without net metering.

The obvious answer is something like the Tesla Powerwall - adding battery storage to our solar panels. That would solve the problem of time-shifting the energy from when it's generated during the day to when we consume it in the evening. However, it does nothing to help us time-shift the energy from the sunny summer months to the dark winter months.

Winter has other energy requirements: namely heating.

In the power generation industry, there is a technique called cogeneration (I had to study it in college). Basically, you burn a fuel in some sort of generator to produce electricity, then take what would normally be waste heat and use it for something productive, like heating the powerplant facilities.

It turns out Honda and a couple other companies are selling household cogeneration units. They replace your central furnace and dump power into your electrical system - sometimes using net metering with the electric utility, just like solar power generation.

So, if money was no object, we could theoretically go off-grid (electrically) using solar panels and batteries in the summer, and a cogeneration unit and batteries in the winter.

Money is an object, of course.

The quotes we got for solar panels indicate we would have to pay roughly $26,000 (before subsidies) for 6kW of solar panels, installation, and the necessary electrical work. Tesla's Powerwall batteries have just about the best kWh per dollar price, but won't even be available til next year, at the earliest. Even then, we would probably need about $15-20,000 in batteries. I haven't found a price for a cogeneration unit, but equivalent-sized generators run about $5-6,000.

Pricey.

Anyway, I like the thought of going off-grid. Can't afford it at our current electric consumption, though.

Net Metering with Solar Energy

Our local Electric Utility - IREA - wants to do away with net metering on houses with solar panel installations. This drastically changes the economics of installing solar panels.

Net Metering is method of accounting for energy production and consumption on a house with solar panels. On sunny days, you (ideally) produce more electricity than you use. This electricity is pumped back into the grid, running the meter backwards and earning you a credit. In the winter, or otherwise dark days, you consume more energy than your solar panels produce and (ideally) you can make up the difference with credits you earned and stored up during sunny days. With a properly sized solar system, you are using the electric utility as a perfectly efficient battery that can store energy for months, and you'll never pay an electric bill again. With an over-sized solar system, you can EARN money from the electric utility.

Obviously, net metering was only ever going to be an inducement for early adoption. If every customer actually earned money for the privilege of treating the utility as a battery, the utility would have no money coming in to pay for the maintenance of power lines (among other overhead costs) and would actually have to pay its customers.

Anyone who thought they would have access to net metering for 25 years (the warranty period for most solar panels) was kidding themselves.

However, Brianna and I thought that net metering would last at least a few years longer, not (potentially) end before we even got our panels installed.

So, for now, our solar panel plans are on hold. Our utility is supposed to decide what their new net metering rate plan is some time this month.

Renting Out the Basement Bedroom

Brianna and I have a big house. Bigger than we need. It's been great for being able to move stuff around while working on the house, but the house improvements are largely complete now.

We're renting out the basement bedroom to a coworker of Brianna's. She'll move in in late June or early July, and stay with us for 6 to 12 months.

We still have plenty of room, though! We'll have a bed in the upstairs office for overnight visitors!

IKEA Trip

Brianna sent me to IKEA after work today to get a changing pad for the changing table. Amazingly, they did not have any in stock, and didn't know when they would get more.

I took the opportunity to look at IKEA's selection of curtains, since we still don't have anything over the bay window. I like IKEA's track system for curtains quite a bit, and I'm confident I can put together a single track for all three walls that make up the bay window.

I kinda like this white curtain. It seems to be the closest match to to the pattern of the blind on the opposite wall from the bay window:

Weekend Prep

This Saturday, Brianna is having her third (and last) baby shower, thrown for her by her family here in Colorado. While she's down in Colorado Springs doing that, I'm going to have something of a work party up here in Denver.

Sven is coming down from Fort Collins in the morning to help me blow insulation into the attic. Unfortunately, there's no way to reserve the insulation blowing machine. I'm just going to have to cross my fingers and maybe visit more than one Home Depot.

In the afternoon, Jarred is coming up to help paint! I have five walls left, two blue and three white, and they each need two coats of paint. That's not all going to get done in one afternoon, but we should get close.

After work today, I did some prep work. I tried (and failed) to reserve the insulation blower, but I picked up some tyvek suits for me and Sven, as well as some long-cuff disposable gloves and some extra plastic sheeting.

I was intending to set up painter's plastic and do some tapeing before going to bed, but I wound up just going to bed.

Attic Insulation

The central section of our attic was originally insulated with blown-in insulation. The areas above the nursery and guest bedroom, and along the sides of the house are insulated with 12-inch-thick batts. The loose insulation in the attic wasn't particularly thick to begin with - I don't think anything has been done up there between when the house was built and when I started mucking about up there. And me mucking about up there had the unintended side effect of flattening a lot of the loose insulation.

I want to blow in new insulation. After looking at my calendars, it seems like my best opportunity to blow insulation into the attic is November 1st, a week from this coming Saturday.

The home improvement group on Reddit has been pretty unanimous that cellulose based insulation is the best way to go with blown-in insulation. But when I stopped by Home Depot after work today, the workers there (well, the whole two of them I talked to) were adamant that fiberglass is the best method.

All the insulation in the attic is already fiberglass, and part of me is thinking I should mix like with like, and go with fiberglass. But I really don't know. Maybe it doesn't even matter all that much, except to the competing companies that sell fiberglass and cellulose insulation.

I did find out that if I buy 10 bales of insulation, the rental for the blowing machine is free. 10 bales would cost about $300, plus tax, minus a 5% discount for using a Home Depot credit card and letting Home Depot track all my purchases - so 10 bales will cost about $300.

I estimate I have about 600 square feet of attic I want to insulate. As long as I'm going through the hassle of borrowing a blowing machine and getting someone to help me, I might as well go whole hog on this thing: adding R49 insulation to the existing insulation in the attic ought to get me to about R60, and apparently going above R60 is rather pointless in residential settings. (Unless you're Passivhaus - then you can never have too much insulation). So, adding R49 to 600 square feet is about 15 bales of insulation, or $450, plus protective gear (tyvek suit, fresh respirator pads, goggles, gloves). Yikes. That's adding up.

...Brianna? What's my budget for this project, honey?

The worst part is, all of this is ignoring the vaulted area of the great room. I have no idea how much insulation is in that area, I only have a vague idea of how I would even access the attic space above that part of the house, and even less of an idea how I could evenly blow insulation in to the scissor trusses. Right now, I think that will have to be a project for next year, assuming I think it's a good idea at that point.

My First Ladder!

I haven't purchased a big tool in a while!

Brianna's Dad has been very gracious about letting me steal borrow his ladders (for over 6 months now!) But I knew eventually he would need them back.

I've been keeping my eye on daily deals websites, and earlier this week Woot.com had a couple of Little Giant ladders on sale. I was able to get a 22-foot Little Giant ladder for just $180, and the best part is: Shipping was only five dollars!

I think this ladder will serve my household needs quite well in the years to come. And it compacts down really small!

I should have no problem getting the rest of the house painted with this ladder.

The plan is to kick Brianna out of the house next weekend and finish painting, by the way.

Air Sealing the Attic

No physical progress on the house today - I'm still letting my toe heal up.

I did look into adding insulation to the attic (something I want to do before winter really sets in).

I learned I'm supposed to air-seal the attic before blowing in insulation. I looked up exactly what that meant, and it's kind of a bummer: I need to caulk or otherwise seal every hole in the ceiling. And I put four additional holes in the ceiling by installing all those ceiling lights - all of which would have been relatively easy to seal at the time of installation - the hard part is getting to each section of the attic where the lights are.

Well, maybe I can seal those light fixtures from below - I'm kinda tired of being in the attic. The previous owners cut a couple of holes in the ceiling as well, for the security system. I know those need to be sealed, because I used the light leaking up through them as a reference point the previous times I was up in the attic.

Future Projects

Now that I'm (personally) done painting the house and all major purchases from IKEA have been completed, I've gotten a couple questions about what is up next for me.

The immediate answer is that my evenings have now cleared up enough to go back to the gym on a regular basis, and to help Brianna study for the PE exam (for her Professional Engineer certificate).

Beyond that, plenty remains to be done for the house.

I'm still maintaining my public to-do list. Paying professional painters to paint the two-story areas of the house is probably going to eat up all of September's house budget. After that, I want to re-insulate the garage, and potentially blow in some more insulation in the attic - hopefully in October, before it gets really cold.

I have a lot of ideas for home automation, and I'm excited to have some free time to work on them. I don't want to list them in this post, or I'll jinx myself and never get around to them.

Other projects I already have planned:

• Install a range hood.
• Continue to baby-proof the electrical outlets throughout the house.
• Install a third exterior light, on the other side of the garage door.
• Replace the house address numbers with a back-lit plaque.
• Install a second pendant lamp in the Great Room.
• Build a self-drawing chalkboard between the kitchen and family room.
• Wire and automate the chicken coop.
• Do something to improve the tortoise's standard of living - a larger terrarium or something.
• Brianna wants to fill that new vase on the dresser with glass beads. I want to mix in some wirelessly-powered LEDs with the glass beads.
• I want to make a picture-frame jewelry box for Brianna based on that Litograph I mentioned earlier.
• Connect the whole-house humidifier (not the evaporative cooler) to the Nest Thermostat.
• Look into Solar power for our south-facing roof.

And who knows what else is going to crop up as we head into our first winter in our new house.

Oh, I've also built up a bit of a reading list over the past seven months. I'm looking forward to knocking that down a bit, too.

I do expect this website to transition from house-blog to baby-blog as I experiment on and program raise my son after he arrives in December. I'm looking into setting up the website so a visitor can see A) everything, B) just baby posts, or C) just house posts. But so far it doesn't look like Blogger supports that kind of functionality.

36 Hours of Solitude

I managed to whine my way out of a trip to the mountains this weekend. I sent Brianna south to her family with a stern admonition to stay hydrated earlier this evening.

I feel a little bit guilty about skipping out on the trip to the mountains, but it's pretty much overwhelmed by feelings of productivity: barring an act of Murphy, the Great Room will be painted and cleared of plastic and debris before Brianna (and her hyper-active sense of smell) gets back on Sunday - which would make this the first room I've completed in just one week. It's also a great opportunity to do electrical work without inconveniencing her. Heck, I may even fold laundry!

I began my celebration of productivity by watching TV for an hour.

And then I got to work:

I may be able to catch up to this schedule afterall.

Great Room Checklist

Remember these? I'm a day behind already.

Turns out I'm spending the weekend out in the Mountains, so with any luck I'll have this room wrapped by the end of Monday (which probably means Wednesday in real life).

Future Back Yard Work

I needed to get this out of my head, so here it is: While chopping those old logs into firewood and working to clean up the dump pile, I've been thinking about what I want that area to look like when it's done. I did a really horrible "photoshop" with Microsoft paint.

In order to match the rest of the yard, I'm thinking gravel along the fence, with a weed-block underneath, and a nice, grassy slope between the back yard and the gate out to the trail system. I'll need to figure out what's going on with that black sprinkler hose (there is no sprinkler down at the base of the hill, but the sprinkler hose goes down there anyway) and rebury it.

Here's an example of the gravel between the grass and the fence in the rest of the back yard:

Visit to Washington - September 5th through 8th

Alright, we're finally making it back to Washington!

We are coming up the weekend after Labor Day, arriving late Friday night, and leaving Monday.

We're looking forward to seeing a lot of people we haven't seen in a long time!

Plans for Nursery Lighting

I'm planning to install a new ceiling fixture in the nursery. Brianna has her heart set on a sun lamp from IKEA, with glow-in-the-dark stars surrounding it.

So I compromised with her: if she got her sun lamp, I got to install a Death Star Lamp:

(That's no Moon)

I went up into the attic this morning to see what the wiring looked like. Unfortunately, the wiring looked like it was under 12 inches of blown-in insulation.

After a lot of scuffling about, and trying very hard to not put my foot through the ceiling, I figured out that the wiring for the switched outlets in both upstairs rooms runs across the ceiling. This is fantastic news for me, because I won't have to fish a wire through the wall - I can just commandeer the existing wiring for the switched outlet for the new light fixtures, and turn the switched outlet into a regular outlet.

Anyway, I didn't make any physical progress on this project this weekend, but I did verify my theory on how the rooms were wired, and have a better understanding of the attic. Oh, and I learned one more thing: when the day comes to install the lights, I'd better get the attic work done before the sun comes up: it was sweltering in there!

Why Do I Even Bother Posting Plans Here?

Well, so much for starting the primer yesterday. I spent all day cleaning and moving things, taping things off, and painting doors and trim. I seem to have misplaced the painter's plastic as well, which is going to be a problem today.

Anyway, at this point I still need to dust all the surfaces I want to paint, put down painter's plastic, and THEN I can start priming.

On a more positive note, I'm on track to have all the upstairs doors painted and re-installed by the end of the day.

Painting Plan

Thursday evening I finished painting the door to the Guest Bedroom, put a second coat of paint on the window sills in the Great Room, and was twenty-five percent done taping off the trim in the Guest Bedroom so I could paint it before re-hanging the door when I decided I was done for the night.

So, I took the rest of the night off.

I did manage to twist Brianna's arm so she actually settled on some colors for the room before the evening was over.

As you can see, there are going to be a lot of transitions. Hmm. Thanks honey.



This morning has been dedicated to getting Brianna packed up for her camping trip with her family.

At this point, it's Eleven AM here, and there is still a ton of work to do before I can start priming. Fortunately, at this point in my new life as a homeowner, I've learned to accept being behind (my own, ridiculous) schedule. Anyway, the upshot is, I'll consider today a success if I can finish the prep work and get the ceiling primed.

Tally-ho!

Checklist Update

I have a grand plan to start painting the Great Room this Fourth of July weekend. Last time I announced my schedule plans here, it didn't work out so well, but let's hope this time is different.

As part of prepping for painting, I rethought the checklists I used upstairs, and updated them:

 

All three rooms pretty much done with painting. The biggest hurdle remaining is lighting. I picked up an IKEA Sol lamp for $10 a while ago for the nursery. I'm going to have to go up into the attic again and do some wiring in order to install it properly. Not really looking forward to that task :-/

Moving Furniture

Now that the kitchen and family room are just about ready to contain furniture again, it's time to start thinking about getting the great room prepped for painting. We have been keeping most of our things in the great room while the other areas get painted, so it is quite a mess. I have slowly started organizing things over the last several days.

Now that the days are fairly warm on a routine basis (often above 80F) the house is pretty warm when we come home, and the cool basement makes for a comfortable retreat. We're planning to move the television down there, and probably some other furniture as well. I cleared out some space for that to happen:

Planning the Week

Brianna is gone on a business trip until Friday evening, which makes this week the best chance I have to work on the kitchen and family room unmolested (love you Sweetheart!). 

I tend to overestimate how much work I can get done in a week, so this time I'm planning it out to (hopefully) avoid frustration.

Monday through Friday. I'm posting this on Tuesday.

I'm glad I made this schedule: I was thinking I would have time to do a bunch of electrical work (mapping the house's electrical system, automating some lights), but I don't think that's going to fit in this week. Bummer.